Are you Northern Irish?

Are you Northern Irish? Well if you come from the north of Ireland, it seems a reasonable claim to make. But the way the demographists have been going on since the latest release of census figures, you’d be pardoned for assuming it meant someone who votes unionist. 

Why all the excitement over what people call themselves? Because it might be the log onto which unionism can attach itself, as the waters whirl and tumble around it, threatening drowning. 

The demographic trend is unmistakeable: the gap between Protestant and Catholic numbers in our little statelet is shrinking at pace. If what happened over the past ten years were to happen again in the next ten years, Catholics here would constitute 46% of the population, Protestants 43%. And were a border poll then called, as it almost certainly would be, the state of Northern Ireland would cease to exist - assuming Catholics voted for a re-united Ireland. Yes, Virginia, I said “assuming”.

The argument that says they would is that they consistently vote for the SDLP and Sinn Féin - both united-Ireland parties. And that’s where the Northern Irish thing comes in. Demographists, Peter Robinson and others claim that Catholics in the north no longer want a united Ireland - that with their fellow-countrymen in the north, they’re forging a new identity which is neither British nor Irish. So growth in Catholic numbers represents no threat.

On the other hand, why call yourself ‘Northern Irish’  if you don’t think you’re Irish as well? Search me. People say funny things when they’re questioned on nationality. I remember in my former life scrutinising applications for a diploma course at the University of Ulster and being struck by the consistency with which some applicants from Catholic schools described themselves as ‘British’. At first I was quite excited, assuming this would mark a surge in the number of Catholics voting unionist. But the years past and the opposite happened - the number of Catholics voting republican increased. I would guess that the applicants assumed the person scrutinising their application would be unionist-inclined, and by declaring yourself British you gave yourself a slight edge, or at least no handicap. In short, they used a British label because in these circumstances they thought it might be to their advantage. In the privacy and anonymity of the polling booth, things were different. 

There’s also the fact that people often define themselves in terms of what they’re not as much as what they are. It may be that the Northern Irish in the census returns were declaring their difference from the brown-envelope culture of the south of Ireland. Which again would be different from voting pro-union, either in elections or in referendums. 

The truth is, we’ll never know - except, that is, a border poll is called. Then we could all give our views and get on with things, the constitutional question either answered or set aside for another seven years. Odd that there isn’t more clamour for that. But that’s Northern Irish/Irish from the north for you. 

A tale of two men under threat

I’ve just listened to two men talking on the radio. One was on BBC Radio Ulster/Raidio Uladh - Jeffrey Donaldson-  and he was talking about the death-threat that he and his family, he says, have received, probably from dissident republicans. If they don’t leave the north of Ireland, the threat says, they will be killed. He says he’s upset about it because naturally he’s concerned for his family.

The other man, interviewed on BBC Radio 4 -  was one of Pat Finucane’s sons - John I think. He was talking about the report to be released today, not about a death-threat to his father but about his father’s murder in front of his wife and children. As you almost certainly know, Pat Finucane was a young lawyer here who was killed by the UDA with acknowledged collusion by British forces. The Finucanes say they will read the report but have little hope for it, since it didn’t involve them and gave no opportunity to interrogate witnesses. As for the British prime minister’s apology, they say he’s got it back to front. First you make clear what events you’re apologizing for, then you apologize. They want a public enquiry.

One obvious difference between the two interviewed men is that while one has received a death threat, the other has been the victim of an executed death-threat ( Pat Finucane was told by prisoners he represented that RUC men had threatened to kill the lawyer). Another difference is that one - Jeffrey Donaldson - is under death-threat from an illegal paramilitary organisation.  Pat Finucane was killed with the willing assistance of state forces - the people whose duty it is to protect citizens. The third difference is that Jeffrey Donaldson appears to be at best ambiguous and at worst rejectionist of a democratic decision arrived at by Belfast City Council. Pat Finucane worked within the law, argued the law on behalf of his clients, accepted the British legal and judicial system here. For that he lost his life. And that’s a big difference. 

Let's count some sectarian heads, shall we?

Well, it’s nice to have something to smile at for a change. All the people who go ‘Tut-tut!’, shake their heads and mutter about the neanderthal thinking of those who go in for sectarian head-counts are now...um, well, busy licking their little pencils and doing a sectarian head-count of the freshly-released census figures. 

OK.  What’s the core point that jumps out? Right - Protestant population down by 5% to 48%, Catholic population up by 1%  to 45%. Replicate that trend next census in 2021 and you’ll have a 43% Protestant population and a 46% Catholic population. Eeeeeeek.

But hold. While 45% of population here are Catholics, only 25% describe themselves as Irish only. Double eeeeek. So Peter Robinson was right all along. Loads and loads of Catholics are really happy as they are and only need a friendly invitation to join the DUP.

Right. That’s the Democratic Unionist Party, which was the Protestant Unionist Party until 1971, when its leader Ian Paisley figured that ‘Democratic’ sounded nicer than ‘Protestant’ in the title. That’s the same Ian Paisley, of course, who believes that Catholics are on the high road to eternal damnation and are being led there by the Pope who is of course the Anti-Christ. 

Mmm. Maybe better not to assume that all those union-loving Catholics will put their tick beside the DUP name in an election. You say they’ll vote for the UUP instead? Pu-lease. The UUP is busy fracturing itself at a rate of knots without tossing the taig-issue into their particular mess. Anyone giving me good odds on Basil McCrea and John McAllister being in the UUP in a year’s time? So that leaves Alliance. Mmm. No, I’m afraid the union-loving Catholics will all have to get together and invent their own union-loving party. ULP has a nice sound for a new party. Like swallowing something you can’t digest.

But of course not joining a unionist party doesn’t mean you wouldn’t vote to stay in the union with Britain, come a referendum.  I imagine quite a few Catholics who see the southern economy sinking even faster than the one north of the border are not going to take any political step that might mean the drowning southern economy pulls them down with it. And then there are those northern Catholics who plain don’t like southerners. So yes, there are a fair number of Catholics who would probably vote to stay in the union with Britain. 

The question is, how many? As the Catholic population continues to grow, and the Protestant population continues to sink, who knows? The south’s economy may revive. The north’s economy may accelerate its descent. Iris Robinson may re-run for Westminster. Events, dear boy, events. There’s no telling. Like, even as I write, I see William Hill has shortened its odds on Britain losing its triple-A rating by next June - was 5/4, now is 4/7.  Talk about eeeeek.

In all this wild swirl of events and figures, one thing is clear: this is Peter Robinson’s moment. He must join with Gerry Adams and call a border referendum quickly, while the Catholic population, or a sizeable part of it, is committed to the Union. 

And if he doesn’t? Well, then he’ll clearly believe a census form is one thing but a polling booth is another.  And on that, if nothing else, I agree with Peter.

From spoof call to utter futility

There’s futility and then there’s utter futility. When I first heard of that spoof call from Australia, impersonating Her Majesty (God bless her) and enquiring after her daughter-in-law, I said “I wouldn’t like to be the nurse that fell for that one!”.  What I had in mind, of course, was that the unfortunate nurse or whoever had let the call through, which had made a laughing-stock of things royal, would get such a blast from her superiors, it’d singe her hair. Alas, it ended with something far, far worse: the death of the unfortunate nurse.

So now - who’s to blame?  Is it the pair in Australia, who carried out the prank?  I would reply with a very firm No. Anyone I spoke to in the immediate aftermath said it was a right laugh, down to the sound of barking Corgis in the background. Now, however, lots of people are getting very moral about the spoof-makers. They’ve been taken off-air, there’s talk of banning all prank calls, they’re the villains. 

I don’t believe that for a moment. I don’t know, of course, but I don’t think it’s wildly inaccurate to speculate   that those higher up the food chain from that poor, poor nurse gave her the mother and father of all bawlings-out, and that this directly related to the terrible and terminal step she took afterwards. The alternative is to believe that the nurse felt so badly about in some way having failed to shield the royal personage, the bearer within her of the next-but-one-or-is-it-two destined to sit on the royal throne, that she felt suicide was the only way out. 

Dear God, I hope not. That would indeed have been an utterly wasteful and futile gesture - to give your life because in some vague way you’d embarrassed a pampered woman getting ready to produce another leech on the public purse. 

Och sure, it's only 100 masked men

I read a tweet yesterday. “Just passed around 100 masked men heading towards city centre”.  The city centre in question was, of course, Belfast. Imagine if the tweet had referred to Dublin or Cork or Liverpool or Manchester - do you think there wouldn’t have been uproar?  If policemen had been hospitalized, if politicians had been behind the appearance of such people on the streets, if  the gate leading into the city hall had been damaged,  if death-threats had been issued against a city councillor and an MP  - would it not have been top story in every radio and TV report, the main headline in every paper? You betcha. But because it’s here,  the British and Irish media give it space, but not really very much. The response, presumably, is “Oh, those crazy Irish, at it again!”.

 I heard Danny Morrison and Alex Kane on radio today, discussing the civil disorder and why it had occurred. Alex at one point said words to the effect “I’ll be meeting people from my community after this broadcast and they’ll say ‘Oh, I heard you getting very pally with that Morrison on the wireless!  And no doubt you’ll get the same - ‘Oh I heard you getting very pally with that Kane’ ”.  Danny Morrison corrected him and said that he, Morrison, would actually get no such reaction. In short,  any attempt to make it one-lot’s-as-bad-as-the-other is bogus.

Take the facts of the matter: the City Council debates an issue,  then votes. They conclude by arriving at a half-way house: some flying of the Union flag some of the time, but no flying of the Union flag all the time. Sounds reasonable. Although  if you were really into tit-for-tat, you’d maybe want to balance the fifteen days that the Union flag will fly at City Hall (15) against the number of days the tricolour will fly at City Hall (0). - but that was never even considered. Even though the flag given allegiance by nationalists and republicans doesn’t enter the debate, even though Belfast City Hall continues stuffed with royalty and British reminders, even though the decision was a perfect example of local democracy in action,  you’ll still hear straight-faced commentators blaming the City Council for having raised the issue.  In this way the people who adhered to the democratic process are condemned, leaving the car-burning mobs of masked men as, well, a response to provocation. 

Where have i heard that before? Ah yes - the Troubles. The IRA started the Troubles, loyalist paramilitarism was simply a response to that. Despite the fact that the first innocent civilians were killed by Gusty Spence and his gang, the first policeman to die was killed during loyalist rioting. 

A favourite claim of some unionist politicians  to words of republican politicians is to talk of ‘the mask slipping‘. So what would you say about those who send out thousands of leaflets calling for protest, naming an individual politician who isn’t even a city councillor, and then go into hand-wringing mode when the called-out demonstrators start to issue death-threats and wreak havoc?

You can try to cook this one whatever way you like, but the unavoidable truth come through: the mask of some unionist politicians has dropped  and what is revealed is not a pretty picture.  

Gentleman Jim speaks out

I’m surprised by the number of people who’ve asked me, after my interview with him, “What’s Jim Allister like?”  Want the truth? OK. I found Jim Allister courteous, witty and the kind of guy you might like to, if not to have a beer with, at least a glass of good wine. Not that there were any signs of wine or strong liquor of any kind when I interviewed him in his office at Stormont.

His parents came from County Monaghan  - one of the three Ulster counties left behind, so to say, when Ireland was partitioned.  That and the fact that both parents were “quite robust and strong” in their unionism probably, he says, played a part in shaping his own political views. Have those views changed over time? Well, he tells me, his enthusiasm for devolution has waned in no uncertain manner, due to the kind of devolution he sees here in the North. 

When we talk about the signing of the Ulster Covenant, he brings it quickly round to the present day. And he’s more than critical of his fellow-unionists.

“They have settled for incredible propositions. We’re supposed to be an integral part of the United Kingdom but we’re not allowed to change our government, we’re not allowed to have an opposition. In fact we must have in government those whose organisations set about murdering and butchering us. As of right! These seem to me light years away from the principles that underscored the Ulster Covenant. I think if you were to say to anyone who signed the Ulster Covenant in 1912 that, a hundred years hence, manifestation of those whose politics you fear will be effectively ruling over you, as of right, and you will not be allowed to have an opposition against them, and you’ll not be allowed to put them out of government or change your government - they would say ‘That’s not what we’re signing the Ulster Covenant for, it’s the very antithesis of what we’re signing the Ulster Covenant for’ ”. 

He had a great-uncle -  his father’s uncle - who died at the Somme, so he believes tribute should be paid to his sacrifice and that of so many more.

“I wouldn’t want to see the Battle of the Somme or any other anniversary hijacked for the politics of the day. We’ve seen that so much, in the selling of the Belfast Agreement, from Bono and John Hume and all the rest in the Waterfront Hall, and every bandwagon being used to sell the latest political message. I don’t want to see a solemn occasion like remembering the Battle of the Somme being turned into a political circus. If the people in the Republic feel enthused to celebrate and mark those who donned the British uniform, then that’s a welcome thing. But my fear is, if you start massaging commemorations for political purposes, then they lose their real purpose. Joint celebration? There’ll be celebrations open to everyone. Just as joining the British Army was open to everyone, and thankfully many of both persuasions did join it. So I don’t think you have to go about and create some sort of artificial ambience for all of this. Either there is something there worth celebrating or there isn’t.”

I’ve saved the tricky one of the three centenaries  - the Easter Rising - for last. How does he see a commemoration of Easter 1916 panning out.

“I have no doubt that already, from the Sinn Féin direction, just as they turn the Hunger Strike commemorations into big political events for their own political advantage, that there will be every attempt on their part to celebrate those whey would see, in their terms, as their forefathers in the rebellion they have engaged in. To an extent they are entitled to do that as they wish. But likewise don’t let them patronise me or ram it down my throat - or rewrite history or recreate them as some sort of heroes.  In my book they were rebels taking the opportunity, as the IRA often did, of Britain’s extremity, to pursue a course of rebellion.  And I don’t want it sanitised and changed beyond the truth of what it was. They’re not going to persuade me that those who took over the GPO did the right thing and that they were anything other than how I’ve described them. If they killed in pursuit of their aim then yes, of course they were murderers, because they weren’t regular troops, acting under the protection of a state of war.”

He concedes that centenary commemorations could increase division between people here but he believes certain occasions demand a response. 

“I think a nation who forgets its history loses its soul.I mean, what is it that makes any nation what they are? It’s the War of Independence and the Civil War, among other things. Now no one suggests to an American that in the interests of the overall collegiate good we should forget about all that, we shouldn’t celebrate any of that or mark any of that.  Likewise no one should suggest to me as a unionist that iconic historic events should not be marked in the way that they deserve, in deference to some nebulous thing which is called progress”.

You could call Jim Allister a thorn in the DUP’s side, a throw-back, a fundamentalist. One thing you couldn’t call him is mealy-mouthed. With Jim Allister, what you see is what you get.  You may not like it but as he sees it, that’s your problem, not his.

[ In case someone hasn't already twigged: this is an edited version of my interview with Jim Allister in my book 'Whose Past Is It Anyway?'  Contact me if your bad local book shop hasn't stocked it and I'll sort you...]

Checking the mirror

I was in Omagh last night, talking to an audience that included a selection of History students and their teacher from the local integrated college. We were talking under the general heading of my book title Whose Past Is It Anyway?. Even as we discussed, back on both sides of Belfast Lough, in Carrickfergus and in Bangor,  loyalists/unionists were taking a leap back into the past - they were busy attacking the Alliance Party centre and issuing death threats to its members. Why? Because  Belfast Alliance councillors had dared to vote - in a completely peaceful, democratic way - for the Union flag to fly over Belfast City Hall on a number of designated days, rather than for 365 days each year. In short, loyalists/unionists had used violence to attack democracy.

In Omagh, our discussion ranged widely. There was quite some time spent looking at  the distinction between ‘celebrating’ a centenary and ‘commemorating’ a centenary, with a general feeling that ‘commemorating’  suggested a more thoughtful attitude to the past, seeing what we could learn from it and what no longer made sense. I quoted from Bernadette McAliskey in the book as exemplifying this take on the past:

“The dead are dead - they have no stake in it, they’re not here. They can inform - the past can inform and guide us in our thinking in the present - but we can’t make choices in the present because somebody died at the Somme or because somebody died in the Easter Rising or because somebody signed the Covenant in his blood”.

It was a lively and informative evening. Perhaps the most interesting moment was when a man who was clearly a committed unionist (“When I hear you come on the radio, I do everything short of throwing it out the window”`) made his contribution.  He declared that he was celebrating the signing of the Covenant, not simply commemorating it. When it was suggested that it might be helpful to sit down, either with fellow-unionists or better still with natioanalists/republicans, and discuss the different perspectives on the same event and what lessons might be learnt for the future, he was firm. Not interested.  Not an inch. End of story.

Maybe it was because he felt outnumbered - there were probably more nationalists/republicans in the audience than unionist - or maybe it was for other reasons. But I remembered the words of Danny Morrison, another of my interviewees from the book. He spoke of the need to “get unionists to relax”. Only when that happens, when they don’t feel threatened, can worthwhile progress be made. The not-interested man in the Omagh audience brought that home forcefully to me. I suppose like other nationalists/republicans, it’s something I tend too often to forget. 

On the other hand, I look at an opinion piece in yesterday's  Guardian by Gareth Mulvenna, which is talking about the violence at Belfast City Hall on Monday night. It concludes

 "Surely parties such as Sinn Fein and the SDLP would not direct such aggressive politics on to the very fringes of society, given that they continually preach about social, economic and political rights? If community relations have been damaged on this occasion, Sinn Fein, the SDLP and Alliance need only look in their respective mirrors."    

Mmm. If Mr Mulvenna were to look in the mirror, he might see my not-an-inch audience member from last night.